Behavioral and Brain Sciences (in press)
Darwin’s triumph: explaining the uniqueness of the
human mind without a deus ex machina
by Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak and Daniel J. Povinelli
Abstract
In our target article, we argued that there is a profound functional discontinuity
between the cognitive abilities of modern humans and those of all other extant species.
Unsurprisingly, our hypothesis elicited a wide range of responses from commentators.
After responding to the commentaries, we conclude that our hypothesis lies closer to
Darwin’s views on the matter than to those of many of our contemporaries.
R1. Introduction
In our target article, we argued that there is a pervasive functional discontinuity
between the cognitive abilities of modern humans and those of all other extant species
due, in large part, to the significant difference in degree to which human and nonhuman
minds are able to approximate the higher-order relational properties of a physical symbol
system (PSS). Unsurprisingly, our Relational Reinterpretation (RR) hypothesis elicited a
wide range of responses from commentators. We thank all of our commentators for
taking the time to suggest where we went wrong (or right) and for numerous
perspicacious suggestions. We will address the issues our commentators raised in
roughly the same order as the corresponding topics were introduced in the original target
article.
R2. Is there, in fact, a functional discontinuity between
human and nonhuman relational cognition?
To some commentators, our hypothesis that there is a functional discontinuity
between human and nonhuman minds seemed self-evident (e.g., Bickerton, Bermudez,
Gentner and Christie, Halford et al., Lupyan, Markman and Stillwell, Shatz,
Wynne). To many others, however, particularly those coming from a comparative
perspective, our hypothesis appeared unfounded, ill-conceived, anti-Darwinian, or at least
premature (e.g., Burghardt, Emery and Clayton, Gardner, Hallinan and Kuhlmeier,
Herman et al., McGonigle and Chalmers, Pepperberg, Siegal and Varley, Tetzlaff
and Carruthers, Thompson and Flemming, Wasserman). Several commentators also
argued that our hypothesis is unfalsifiable. Emery and Clayton, for example,
complained that the cognitive differences we postulated between human and nonhuman
minds “are without exception impossible to quantify because of the reliance on language
in experiments of human cognition.” Similarly, Wasserman argued that we failed to
provide “clear behavioral tests” that would “enable investigators to see if nonverbal
creatures can exhibit cognitive performances that all would agree are truly higher-order,
relational and systematic.”
In the Appendix, we propose an extensive set of nonverbal experiments that
should erase any doubts as to the falsifiability of our hypothesis. Hereinbelow, we
address the various objections commentators raised against our claim that there is a
functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman cognition.
R2.1. The discontinuity in the continuum
Many commentators argued that there is no discontinuity between human and
nonhuman minds because the cognitive abilities of human and nonhuman animals exist
along a “continuum” (e.g., Burghardt, Hallinan and Kuhlmeier, Herman et al.,
McGonigle and Chalmers, Pepperberg, Siegal and Varley, Tomlinson and Love,
Wasserman). We tried to forestall this objection by clearly defining upfront what we
meant by the term “discontinuity” in our target article (see footnote 1). But it seems our
definition of this term got lost in the rush to defend Darwin’s honor. We therefore begin
this reply by pointing out, once again, that our claim that there is a significant gap (aka
“functional discontinuity”) between the relational abilities of modern humans and those
of all other extant nonhuman species is completely consistent with the fact that the
relational abilities of all extant species undoubtedly evolved along a multidimensional
continuum and can still be distributed along that continuum.
According to the framework laid out in our target article, relational cognitive
processes run the gamut from simple conditional discriminations based on the perceptual
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similarity between objects (e.g., same/different tasks) to systematic inter-domain
inferences based on higher-order structural correspondences (e.g., analogical inferences).
At the simplest end of the spectrum, relational discriminations can be made by encoding
relations into analog measures of perceptual variability. At the most complex end of the
spectrum, relational inferences can only be made using explicitly structured
representations of roles, relations and fillers. In both human and nonhuman animals,
relational problems at the simplest end of the spectrum are typically solved using
“embedded” perception and action routines (see Barrett). Relational problems at the
most complex end of the spectrum require increasingly abstract, non-domain-specific
representations including, at the limit, extensive linguistic scaffolding (see Bermudez,
Gentner and Christie).
As Clark and Thornton (1997) pointed out in this journal a decade ago, relational
problems are “rife” in biologically realistic settings but animals regularly solve them—
typically quite well. Thus, it is apparent that (almost) all biological cognizers are capable
of ‘reasoning’ about relations to some degree. Indeed, if every organism that had ever
lived on this planet still existed today, there would be no functional discontinuity to speak
of and the immense interval between the two ends of this relational spectrum would be
filled with “numberless gradations” (Darwin 1871 p 35). But, based on the available
empirical evidence, there appears to be a significant gap between the relational abilities
of modern humans and all other extant species—a gap at least as big, we argued, as that
between human and nonhuman forms of communication. Among extant species, only
humans seem to be able to reason about the higher-order relations among relations in a
systematic, structural and role-based fashion. Ex hypothesi, higher-order, role-based
relational reasoning appears to be a uniquely human specialization, or “human cognitive
autapomorphy” (our thanks to Suddendorf for reminding us of this excellent term; see
extended discussion in Povinelli & Eddy 1996, Chapter 1).
R2.2. Is our hypothesis ‘premature’?
Many commentators claimed that our hypothesis is “premature” (e.g., Emery and
Clayton, Hallinan and Kuhlmeier, Lupyan, Pepperberg, Siegal and Varley,
Wasserman). Now, it would clearly be premature (indeed daft) to claim that we have
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definitively refuted all alternative hypotheses, or that our RR hypothesis is the last word
on the issue of what makes the human mind human. But it hardly seems premature to
postulate the possibility that human cognition is, indeed, unique in certain ways and to
make some attempt to specify how and why. In our eyes, postulating plausible, falsifiable
hypotheses and then trying to verify those hypotheses empirically is the sine qua non of
any experimental science. If our target article serves no other purpose than to motivate
our critics to go forth and prove us wrong, our efforts will not have been in vain. We are
happy to be hostage to empirical fortune.
R2.3. Same-different relations
Thompson and Flemming cite a list of studies showing that nonhuman animals
can acquire a ‘categorical’ understanding of sameness and difference relations.
Pepperberg makes a similar claim on behalf of Alex. We agree that a ‘categorical’
understanding of perceptual similarity is not a uniquely human capability. We made the
same point in our target article. The crucial and persistently overlooked issue, however, is
that the kind of cognitive operation required to pass “same-different” (S/D) and
“relational match-to-sample” (RMTS) tasks is not the same kind of operation required to
reason about higher-order relations in a systematic, structural, role-based fashion. The
fundamental problem is that the relations at stake in S/D and RMTS tasks involve
symmetrical and interchangeable roles and are therefore reducible to analog measures of
variability, such as entropy. Thus, the ability to make a categorical distinction between
displays above and below a certain entropy threshold is not evidence for higher-order
relational reasoning in the structural or role-based sense posited by our hypothesis.
Gentner and Christie claim that although RMTS tasks involving multiple items
per set can be solved by perceptual variability alone, tasks involving only two items per
set cannot. This is incorrect. Using the definition of categorical entropy proposed by
Young and Wasserman (1997), “same” pairs such as AA have an entropy of 0, whereas
“different” pairs such as AB have an entropy of 1. The difference in entropy between allsame and all-different displays is certainly smaller in two-item sets than in multiple-item
sets; but there is a non-zero difference nonetheless. Training with same/different symbols
may improve subjects’ ability to pay attention to these small differences in entropy (a
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form of perceptual learning) or may align the threshold for their responses more closely
to those of humans. However, once the possibility that RMTS tasks can be solved using
an analog measure of variability is admitted, it must also be admitted the task lacks the
power, even in principle, to demonstrate that a subject is reasoning about the kind of
higher-order, structurally explicit relations that Gentner and her colleagues have
rightfully claimed to be the centerpiece of human cognition (e.g., Gentner 2003).
Thompson and Flemming point out that there is a disparity between the
responses of nonhuman apes and monkeys on RMTS tasks. Thompson and Flemming ask
why such a disparity exists if (as we argue) the RMTS task is solvable using entropy
values.
There are many possible reasons for this disparity. The fact that there is a
significant gap between the relational abilities of human and nonhuman subjects does not
imply that the relational abilities of all other extant species are identical or even
homogeneous. The RMTS task may be more computationally complex than the S/D task
for primates. And the two-item RMTS task may require a greater sensitivity to variability
than the multi-item RMTS task. These are all plausible hypotheses that deserve further
experimental scrutiny. But the fact that only certain species possess the evolved heuristics
and/or processing capacity necessary to solve two-item RMTS tasks does not imply that
the RMTS task requires subjects to reason about higher-order structural relations. To
make this latter claim, Thompson and Flemming would need to show that the RMTS
task requires subjects to reason about higher-order relations in a structurally sensitive
fashion. And this, they have not done.
R2.4. Analogical relations
We defined “analogical reasoning” as the ability to draw inferences about a target
domain based on systematic, structural similarities between a source domain and the
target domain, where the relevant similarities are based on the roles various entities play
in their respective relations, and structural similarities between the relations, rather than
(and distinct from) perceptual similarities between the entities involved in the relations
(Gentner 1983; Gentner & Markman 1997; Holyoak & Thagard 1995). Like any other
form of relational reasoning, analogical inferences vary in their degree of abstraction,
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structural sophistication and domain specificity. Even four-year-old children understand
simple analogies involving familiar visuospatial relations, e.g., “if a tree had a knee,
where would it be? (Gentner 1977). But it takes quite a bit of linguistic scaffolding, interdomain mapping and content-specific enculturation to make sense out of Donald
Rumsfeld’s assertion that installing democracy in Iraq is like teaching a child to “ride a
bike” (Silverstein 2007). According to our RR hypothesis, reasoning about even the
simplest, most modality-specific analogies is a human cognitive autapomorphy.
Many commentators agree with us that analogical reasoning is a distinctively
human capability (e.g., Bermudez, Gentner and Christie, Hallinan and Kuhlmeier,
Markman and Stilwell). Thompson and Flemming, however, argue that at least one
chimpanzee, Sarah, is also capable of comprehending some analogies. We have
considerable sympathy with their point of view, as one of us (KJH) reached similar
conclusions at one time (Holyoak & Thagard 1995). However, more recent findings (i.e.,
Oden et al. 2001) have shown that Sarah’s performance does not merit this conclusion.
Thompson and Flemming admit that Sarah’s performance on Oden et al.’s
(2001) replication does not qualify as a “material analogy” and acknowledge that Sarah’s
performance was functionally equivalent to the performance of other primates and birds
on S/D tasks. Thompson and Flemming nonetheless claim that Sarah’s performance
counts as a “formal analogy”, and find our own definition of analogy “overly exclusive.”
Researchers clearly use the term “analogy” to refer to a wide variety of relational
inferences (see, for example, Gentner and Christie, Halford et al., Herman et al.,
Lupyan, Markman and Stillwell). But Thompson and Flemming’s definition of a
“formal analogy” is exceptionally idiosyncratic. In the philosophical literature (e.g.,
Hempel 1965), a formal analogy is defined as an isomorphism between systems of
relations (e.g., the analogy between groups in algebra and topological manifolds in
geometry). Sarah’s strategy for solving geometric “analogies”—equating number of
featural changes—does not establish an isomorphism, and hence does not exemplify an
analogy under any established definition. If the term “formal analogy” is now to be used
to refer to relational tasks that can be solved by comparing analog measures of variation,
then indeed Sarah is capable of solving “formal analogies”— but so are many other
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species, including pigeons (Cook & Wasserman in press). Thompson and Flemming’s
change in terminology simply shifts the semantics, not the substance, of the debate.
The substantive debate is not about how to define the term “analogy”, but about
whether or not there is a discontinuity in the cognitive mechanisms that human and
nonhuman animals employ to make relational inferences. Thompson and Flemming
propose that there is a discontinuity between the symbolic-relational abilities of apes and
all other species (see also Thompson & Oden 2000). We believe this “analogical ape”
hypothesis fails twice: It severely underestimates the symbolic-relational abilities of
other non-primate species (see, for example, the commentaries by Herman et al. and
Pepperberg). And it glosses over the fundamental, qualitative difference between the
feature-based strategy employed by Sarah and the non-domain-specific, role-based
analogies made universally by modern humans. Even Thompson and Flemming admit
that the sole evidence of a nonhuman animal having solved a “material analogy” is
Sarah’s unreplicated performance on Experiment 3 reported by Gillan et al. (1981). As
we pointed out in our target article, Sarah’s remarkable and unreplicated success in this
experiment constitutes exceedingly thin support for the “analogical ape” hypothesis (see
our Appendix for examples of experimental protocols that could provide evidence for
various kinds of analogical reasoning in nonverbal subjects).
R2.5. Rules
Tetzlaff and Carruthers are right to emphasize the fact that rule learning (or, at
least, rule-like learning) can be found among minds as distantly related to humans as
those of honeybees and desert ants. We made the same point in our target article. But we
hypothesized that only humans possess the ability to learn rules that involve nonperceptual, structural relations among role-based variables. Tetzlaff and Carruthers
provide no reason to doubt this hypothesis.
For example, the location of a particular object with respect to specific landmarks
is the epitome of a perceptual (i.e., spatial) relation between observable stimuli. Thus,
the fact that honeybees’ path integration mechanisms use the distance and angle between
arbitrary landmarks is evidence that they can represent these spatial relations in a rule7 of 51
like fashion; but it hardly counts as evidence that they are reasoning independently of
“perceptually-based information” as Tetzlaff and Carruthers claim.
R2.6. Higher-order spatial relations
Hallinan and Kuhlmeier do not challenge our claim that reasoning about higherorder spatial relations is a uniquely human specialization, nor our interpretation of the
chimpanzees’ performance on Kuhlmeier and Boysen’s (2002) scale-model task. Instead,
they point out that human children younger than five years of age sometimes fail a fully
relational version of this task as well, and argue that the “continuous” nature of human
ontogeny implies a similar continuity in phylogeny.
We will return to question the analogy between ontogenetic and phylogenetic
continuity below. For now, let us simply note just how marked the gap is between human
children and all other animals on this planet. All normal five-year-old children reason
about three-dimensional scale models in a systematic fashion, as Hallinan and
Kuhlmeier fully admit. Moreover, there is even evidence that children as young as three
years of age can use distance information from a map to find a point in the real world
along a single dimension and, by five years of age, can find objects using a twodimensional map where the objects are located some distance away from any mapped
landmarks (Huttenlocher et al. 1999; Vasilyeva & Huttenlocher 2004). Needless to say,
there is no evidence that any nonhuman animal could use a one or a two-dimensional
map in this fashion (but see the Appendix for a protocol that could be used to test for this
ability in nonhuman subjects).
R2.7. Transitive inference
We singled out Lazareva et al.’s (2004) test of ‘transitive responding’ in hooded
crows as a recent example of an experimental protocol that lacks the power, even in
principle, of providing evidence for logically-underpinned transitive inferences (TI).
Notably, Wasserman did not challenge our analysis of these results; instead he claimed
that we failed to provide any examples of experimental protocols that could falsify our
hypothesis. In the Appendix, we suggest a lab-based protocol that could be used to test
for TI in a nonverbal species.
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We also criticized two recent ‘naturalistic’ experiments that claimed to have
demonstrated TI in male pinyon jays and small African cichlids (Grosenick et al. 2007;
Paz et al. 2004). Pepperberg did not defend the validity of these experiments but instead
cited two sets of experiments with great tits (Otter et al. 1999; Peake et al. 2002) that we
had overlooked. These experiments do, indeed, provide additional evidence that the
ability to reason about tertiary social relations is not limited to primates (cf. Tomasello &
Call 1997). But they provide no evidence that great tits are capable of TI.
In Otter et al. (1999)’s experiment, for example, it suffices for the female subject
to keep track of the dominance relation between her mate and any males she has heard in
her current mate’s territory and then follow the procedural rule <look for males that have
dominated my current mate>. As we explained in our target article, the ability to
recognize the social relation among conspecifics based on certain perceptual cues and to
rank conspecifics relative to some egocentric benchmark (e.g., my own dominance
ranking, my current mate, my matriline) is widely available in the animal kingdom (e.g.,
Grosenick et al. 2007; Paz et al. 2004; Silk 1999). What appears to be missing among
extant nonhuman species is the ability to systematically generalize information about
observed relations to unobserved tertiary relations in a transitive fashion. Although
neither of the experiments with great tits provides any evidence for this ability, in the
Appendix we show how Otter et al.’s (1999) protocol could be adapted to provide a valid
test of TI.
R2.8. Hierarchical relations
Reasoning about hierarchical relations is a universal feature of human cognition
and, as Shatz points out, well within the repertoire of toddlers. Contrary to persistent
claims by comparative researchers over the years (e.g., Bergman et al. 2003; Greenfield
1991; Matsuzawa 1996; Pepperberg 2002), we argued that reasoning about hierarchical
relations is outside the scope of the capabilities of any extant nonhuman species. None of
our commentators directly challenged our analysis of this evidence.
Instead, Pepperberg mentions an experiment by T. Gentner et al. (2006) that
purports to show that European starlings can learn a recursive, center-embedded
grammar. But it is far from clear that the particular grammar mastered by the starlings in
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this experiment requires a hierarchical or recursive computation (see Corballis 2007). In
addition, there is no evidence that starlings can generalize the patterns they did learn to
novel vocabularies—the essential feature of cognizing hierarchical relations in a
language-like fashion (Marcus 2006). It is worth noting that even Herman et al.’s
dolphins never demonstrated the ability to process sentences involving hierarchically
embedded constructions. Herman (1984) once claimed that the dolphins responded
appropriately to “recursive forms including conjoined constituents and conjoined
sentences” (p. 188); however, the tests given were, at best, examples of “tail recursion”
and thus did not involve embedded structures or hierarchical relations.
McGonigle and Chalmers cite an experiment (McGonigle et al. 2003)
purporting to show evidence for “hierarchical classification” in monkeys and claim that
this experiment sheds light on the “genesis” of human thought and language. In the cited
experiment, McGonigle et al. (2003) presented four capuchin monkeys with nine icons
that were to be selected on a touch screen in a predefined order: first by shape and then in
order of increasing size. After thousands of trials conducted over more than four years of
training, the capuchin monkeys succeeded in selecting the 9 icons in the correct order at
least 75% of the time over 20 consecutive trials. McGonigle et al. (2003) interpret these
results as “evidence for hierarchical processing based on branching procedures.” Indeed,
McGonigle et al. (2003) claim that the monkeys acquired rules “similar to those operating
in a phrase structure grammar,” and explicitly challenge Hauser et al.’s (2002) hypothesis
that hierarchical and recursive computations are uniquely human.
Given the exhaustive task-specific training McGonigle et al. (2003) employed, it
is hard to interpret the cognitive significance of these results. But one thing is clear: the
manifest behavior of the capuchin monkeys in this experiment has very little bearing on
whether or not they are capable of reasoning about hierarchical relations in a human-like
fashion. What makes hierarchical and recursive operations such a powerful component of
the human language faculty is that they enable human subjects to generatively combine a
finite number of linguistic elements into an unlimited range of novel combinations.
McGonigle et al. (2003) provide no evidence that capuchin monkeys are able to
recombine hierarchically organized sequences in a systematic or generative fashion. For
example, there is no evidence that the monkeys would be able to switch from sorting on
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the basis of shape and then size to sorting on the basis of size and then shape without
learning the entire sequence over from scratch. If it took human language learners
thousands of trials to acquire a single invariant sentence, human language would be of
little interest.
R2.9. Causal relations
A key claim in our target article is that the ability to reason about unobservable
causal mechanisms is a uniquely human capability (see also Penn & Povinelli 2007a;
Povinelli 2000; Vonk & Povinelli 2006). We interpreted Seed et al.’s (2006) results as
further evidence for this hypothesis. Emery and Clayton claim that we were guilty of
“misinterpretations, absences and misrepresentations” in our portrayal of Seed et al.’s
(2006) experiment. What is “at issue”, Emery and Clayton write, is the performance of a
single rook, Guillem, who passed the crucial transfer test.
We fail to see where the alleged “misrepresentations” are to be found. Indeed,
our interpretation of Guillem’s singular behavior is the same as that proposed by the
authors of the original paper:
Given that six of the seven rooks failed to transfer to Tubes C and D which had
no visual features in common with the first task, it seems unlikely that they had
an understanding of the unobservable causal properties of the task at their
disposal.... The surprising performance of Guillem, who solved all four tasks
despite the lack of a constant arbitrary visual cue, deserves further attention... but
the result of one bird among seven must be interpreted with caution (Seed et al.
2006 p. 700).
We certainly agree that Guillem’s behavior deserves “further attention”, but
Tebbich et al. (2007) subsequently replicated the same task on seven new rooks and
found that only 3 out of 7 passed the perceptual transfer task and none of them passed the
crucial non-perceptual transfer task. In the abstract to this paper, Tebbich et al. (2007)
write:
We found no evidence compatible with the formation of a mental representation
of physical problems given that none of these 3 birds passed the transfer tasks.
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This is not surprising given that there is no evidence to date that any tool-using
animal has a causal understanding of the trap-tube problem.
If anything, our interpretation of Seed et al.’s (2006) results seems to be more
generous than that of the original authors: Contra Tebbich et al. (2007), we posit that
rooks as well as other nonhuman animals do, indeed, have a “mental representation of
physical problems” and a “causal understanding of the trap-tube problem”—albeit not
one that involves unobservable causal mechanisms (see again Penn & Povinelli 2007a;
Povinelli 2000).
Emery and Clayton also argue that the rooks’ performance on the two-tube task
could not be due to “domain-specific expectations” because rooks do not use tools in the
wild. Here, we suspect that both we and Emery and Clayton were tripped up by the
protean term “domain-specific.” Emery and Clayton interpreted our use of the term as
meaning “tool-specific.” We meant the term to refer to the domain of physical causal
reasoning in general, not tools in particular. Many cognitive psychologists believe that
human subjects reason about the physical world using formal and substantive
assumptions such as temporal priority, causal directionality, and Michottean perceptual
causal principles that are specific to the domain of physical causality, but not specific to
tool use per se (see Gopnik et al. 2004; Lagnado et al. 2005). There is abundant evidence
that nonhuman animals make many of the same causal assumptions as humans (see Penn
& Povinelli 2007a for a review). In our view, the fact that a non-tool-using species such
as rooks was able to quickly master the initial version of Seed et al.’s (2006) task is
compelling evidence that at least some nonhuman animals are able to reason about novel
tool-use tasks using knowledge and expectations that are specific to physical causal
relations but not to tool-use per se (see also Santos et al. 2006).
R2.10. Theory of Mind
In our target article, we criticized Dally et al.’s (2006) experiment with scrubjays as providing no new positive evidence for ToM abilities. Emery and Clayton did
not challenge our interpretation of Dally et al. (2006). Instead, they reasserted that scrub
jays are capable of ‘experience projection’ based on evidence reported by Emery and
Clayton (2001).
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In these experiments, Emery and Clayton investigated the propensity of scrubjays to re-cache food that they had previously cached in front of a conspecific, and found
that scrub-jays only re-cached food when they had had prior experience stealing another
bird’s caches. “This result raises the exciting possibility,” Emery (2004 p. 21) wrote,
“that birds with pilfering experience can project their own experience of being a thief
onto the observing bird, and so counter what they would predict a thief would do in
relation to their hidden food” (see also Emery & Clayton 2004).
As noted in Penn and Povinelli (2007b), this may be an “exciting possibility” but
it is certainly not the only, or even the most cogent explanation. Unfortunately, the
existing evidence sheds almost no light on the internal mental representations or
cognitive processes being employed by the birds in question. For example, all of the birds
involved in this experiment had had previous experience being pilfered (see discussion in
Emery & Clayton in press). But Emery and Clayton do not explain how scrub jays have
the cognitive prowess necessary to reason by analogy to their own subjective experience
as pilferers but do not have the cognitive wherewithal to realize they should start caching
once they have been victims of pilferage themselves. Indeed, Emery and Clayton do not
explain why a species with the ability to reason by analogy cannot understand, prior to
pilfering somebody else’s cache, that caching food from potential competitors might be a
good idea.
To make matters worse, the existing evidence has not ruled out the obvious
possibility that pilfering changes the subjects’ motivation to cache their own food rather
than their cognitive understanding of the functional value of caching per se. This is the
point of our analogy to redirected aggression in primates (see Penn & Povinelli 2007b):
after conflicts, monkeys sometimes behave more aggressively towards groupmates not
involved in the original conflict. This evolved behavior seems to be adaptive, both
because it reduces monkeys’ stress hormones and because it lessens their chance of being
victims of further harassment (Silk 2002). But there is no reason to conclude that
monkeys are reasoning by analogy to their own subjective experience as ‘victims.’ The
same evolutionary and ecological analysis, mutatis mutandis, might shed some light on
why scrub jays only cache their food once they have had experience pilfering. In the
meantime, the claim that scrub jays are capable of ‘experience projection’ would seem to
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require considerably more empirical support before this “exciting possibility” could be
qualified as anything more than that (see our Appendix for an example of how such
evidence might be produced).
Herman et al. cite the example of bottlenosed dolphins responding to “tandem +
create” commands as an example of “collaboration.” In fact, as Herman (2006) himself
acknowledges, responding to the tandem + create command need not require explicit
collaboration or intentional communication. It suffices for one of the two dolphins in the
pair to understand that the tandem + create command requires it to mimic the behavior of
the other dolphin. To be sure, this is no mean cognitive feat; and we know of no other
nonhuman subject that has ever manifested this degree of symbolic-relational
sophistication. At the very least one of the dolphins on each trial interpreted the argument
"create" in the context of a "tandem" command in a radically different manner than it had
in the past. But the available evidence is still a long way from demonstrating that
dolphins understand each other’s roles in a collaborative fashion or are capable of
intentional communication. In the Appendix, we propose a modified version of Herman
et al.’s tandem + create command that could provide definitive evidence for role-based
collaboration and intentional communication among dolphins as well as a nonverbal
‘false belief’ task that could provide positive evidence, at least in principle, that there is
another species on this planet that possesses a ToM.
R2.11. A LoT for every species
After reviewing the comparative evidence across a variety of domains, we (like
Bermudez) concluded that extant nonhuman species do, in fact, possess representational
systems that are “syntactically structured”, “functionally compositional” and “featurally
systematic” to some degree (we thank Bermudez for suggesting this last term). Thus, as
we pointed out, our RR hypothesis should not be reduced to the claim that human minds
alone approximate a LoT whereas nonhuman minds do not. Quoting Bloom (2000), we
argued that “every species gets the syntax it deserves.”
Notwithstanding our efforts to forestall this very misunderstanding, Tetzlaff and
Carruthers make the same point as if they are disagreeing with us: “even the thought
capacities of a very simple mind could approximate one LoT-based system to the same
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extent as a human’s could approximate another.” To reiterate: we believe that minds as
“simple” (sensu Carruthers) as those of honeybees employ internal mental representations
that are syntactically-structured, functionally compositional and featurally systematic to
some degree. Because human minds are by no means unique in approximating a LoT, the
real issue is what distinguishes the human species of LoT from all the others that remain
on this planet. Carruthers (2002; 2005) has argued elsewhere that there are certain
features of human thought—particularly our ToM and faculty for language—that are
distinctively human. So it would seem that Tetzlaff and Carruthers would have to agree
with us that there is something uniquely human about the modern human LoT.
Unfortunately, Tetzlaff and Carruthers do not suggest what this might be.
Wasserman finds our claim that there is a difference in “kind” between the
manifest cognitive abilities of human and nonhuman animals to be inconsistent with our
claim that there is a difference in “degree” between human and nonhuman animals’
ability to approximate the relational capabilities of a PSS. The problem here is not an
“anomaly” in our logic—the problem is that Wasserman does not acknowledge the
difference between a functional- and a representational-level of analysis (Marr 1982). In
our target article, we use the construct of a PSS as a heuristic framework for
decomposing the relational operations manifested by biological cognizers at a functionallevel of analysis into distinct representational-level components (i.e., symbols,
compositionality, types and tokens, etc.). As we point out, different species approximate
these multifarious features of a PSS to varying degrees. Ex hypothesi, the difference in
degree to which various species approximate the features of a PSS at a representationallevel produces a difference in the kinds of relational reasoning these species manifest in
their cognitive behaviors. In particular, although all biological cognitive architectures
approximate the features of a PSS to some degree, only those cognizers that closely
approximate the higher-order, structural properties of a PSS manifest the kinds of
relational reasoning that are characteristic of human cognition (e.g., ToM, analogical
inferences, hierarchically-structured languages, reasoning about unobservable causal
mechanisms).
Halford et al. propose that dynamic binding to a coordinate system in working
memory is the fundamental prerequisite for any form of relational reasoning. We agree.
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And, in our view, Halford et al.’s proposal provides a more plausible and cogent
framework for understanding the LoT-like abilities of honeybees and desert ants than
does the classical version of a LoT espoused by Tetzlaff and Carruthers. Halford et
al.’s proposal also puts a hard lower limit on the kinds of computational architectures that
constitute plausible models of animal cognition (cf. Lupyan).
Halford et al. propose two protocols for testing the compositionality and
systematicity of nonhuman mental representations, using a delayed response task and
“generativity tests” based on learned relational schemas. Our prediction is that nonhuman
animals of many taxa will pass both of these tasks but that many PDP-style models will
have great difficulty with them. Of course, it is important to keep in mind that Halford et
al.’s proposed tasks only test whether a subject can form implicitly structured relations by
binding an object to a “slot” in working memory. This is a necessary prerequisite for
functionally compositional and syntactically structured representations (Horgan &
Tienson 1996). But Halford et al.’s tasks do not test the capacity to reason about higherorder relations or relational roles in the fashion that we have posited is unique to modern
humans. In their past research, Halford and colleagues have employed a wide variety of
protocols to test higher-order, role-based relational capabilities in human subjects (e.g.,
Andrews & Halford 2002; Andrews et al. 2003; Halford 1984; Halford et al. 2005;
Halford & Busby 2007). Many of these protocols can (and should) be adapted to probe
the similarities and differences between human and nonhuman LoTs (see our Appendix
for examples).
R3. Who gets to become human?
As Shatz points out, the cognitive abilities of even the most highly encephalized
and enculturated nonhuman pale in comparison to the typical human child. Some of our
commentators, however, tried to use the ontogenetic evidence against us (e.g., Hallinan
and Kuhlmeier, McGonigle and Chalmers, Siegal and Varley, Wasserman): if
human infants start out with less sophisticated cognitive abilities that some adult
nonhuman animals, they argued, how can we claim that there is an innate, geneticallyprespecified ‘discontinuity’ between human and nonhuman animals? Darwin, of course,
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relied on a similar argument to bolster his case for the mental continuity between humans
and other animals (Darwin 1871 p. 84; cited approvingly by Wasserman). Let’s take
apart this venerable argument piece by piece.
R3.1. Nature and nurture (and more nature)
Many of our commentators (e.g., Hallinan and Kuhlmeier, Lupyan, McGonigle
and Chalmers, Siegal and Varley, Wasserman), assumed that because we postulated
an “innate” or “genetic” basis for the discontinuity between human and nonhuman
cognition we were necessarily denying the importance of ontogeny, environment,
language, enculturation and everything else. For example, Wasserman acknowledges
that the neural systems of humans may differ from those of nonhumans but asks, “Do
these systems merely mature as the child approaches adulthood? Or must these systems
be carefully cultivated by enriching experiences to fully flower?”
Wasserman’s rhetorical question poses a false dilemma. There is no either/or
when it comes to nature and nature. No biological system, least of all a neural one,
“merely” matures on its own. The ontogeny of any biological system is substantially
modulated by its environment. But this does not mean that genetic factors play no role in
shaping an organism’s ontogeny. There is a complex, nonlinear, epigenetic relationship
between genes and the environment that plays out over the entire lifespan of an
organism—even an enculturated organism.
R3.2. Does primate phylogeny recapitulate human ontogeny?
Hallinan and Kuhlmeier argue that there would only be a true cognitive
discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds if the behavior evident in the first
stages of human development looked strikingly different from the capacities we see in
other species. But the fact that nonhuman primates perform as well as three-year-old
children on some (but not other) tasks has little bearing on our claim that there is a
fundamental discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. The monumental fact
of the matter—a fact which Hallinan and Kuhlmeier do not deny—is that the ontogenetic
trajectory of one particular primate species’ relational abilities distinguishes itself from
that of all other extant species on the planet. As Shatz points out, by the second year of
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life, the cognitive differences between humans and other primates are unmistakable. And
by age five, the functional discontinuity is so enormous that even the most generous
comparative psychologist cannot deny the disparity.
Hallinan and Kuhlmeier end up proposing a theoretical account for the disparity
between human and nonhuman relational cognition that appears to be the same as our
own. Citing Povinelli (2001), they postulate that humans possess an “an additional
system that sits side-by side with evolutionarily older systems” and that this additional
system allows for analogical reasoning that is not “constrained by superficial or contextspecific correspondences.” To our ears, that sounds a lot like our hypothesis (see also
Povinelli 2000; Povinelli & Bering 2002; Povinelli et al. 2000). Like Hallinan and
Kuhlmeier, we believe that our uniquely human system for higher-order, role-based
relational reasoning continues to interact with cognitive systems that are evolutionarily
more ancient and that come on-line earlier in normal human ontogeny (the second ‘R’ in
our ‘RR’ hypothesis stands for ‘reinterpretation’, not ‘replacement’). But Hallinan and
Kuhlmeier are mistaken, in our opinion, to believe that our ‘Reinterpretation’ hypothesis
is inconsistent with the claim that there is a fundamental discontinuity between human
and nonhuman minds. Both we and Hallinan and Kuhlmeier postulate that there is an
“additional system” responsible for subserving our uniquely human ability to reason
about higher-order relations and that the emergence of this additional system is unique
the ontogeny of members of our species. Unless Hallinan and Kuhlmeier want to argue
that the profound disparity between the cognitive ontogenies of human and nonhuman
primates is due solely to environmental factors, there must be something unique about the
potential of the human mental architecture from day one.
R3.3. Constructing the human mind
Lupyan seems to believe that we consider the human mind to be “innately
symbolic and propositional.” Our RR hypothesis could not be farther from this strawman.
We explicitly denounced the classical view of the mind as biologically implausible and
functionally impoverished. To argue that humans and nonhumans differ in their potential
for symbolic-relational cognition from conception forward does not entail—or even
suggest—that the human cognitive architecture is born with its adult-state symbolic18 of 51
relational abilities all wired up and ready to go. Our claim is that the human genotype has
the unique potential to produce a neural architecture capable of higher-order relational
reasoning. Without the appropriate internal and external inputs, however, this genetic
potential is sure to be thwarted.
Lupyan goes on to point out that some of the authors we cited on the subject of
human language learning do not support the view that adult syntactic competence is
prewired into the human brain (e.g., Gomez & Gerken 2000; Tomasello 2000). We cited
these authors for a reason: unlike a Chomskyan view of language, our RR hypothesis
does not posit that human beings are born with adult syntactic competence. Again, our
claim is simply that there must be something different about the human cognitive
architecture in order to explain why only human children have the potential to learn
grammatically-structured languages, develop a ToM, participate in collaborative
activities, acquire culturally-transmitted knowledge and employ external symbol systems
to scaffold their cognitive achievements.
R3.4. Equal opportunity for pigeons?
Gardner objects to comparative researchers’ tradition of “nondiscoveries” of
“noncontinuity” based on “nonexperiments.” Gardner is right to remind readers that
comparative psychology has been guilty of some rather embarrassing methodological
blunders in its short history. Gardner is also certainly correct that differences in rearing
conditions and training procedures have a significant impact on the cognitive
performance of both human and nonhuman animals. But the claim that human cognitive
uniqueness is solely and merely the product of human enculturation is difficult to sustain.
The research cited by Herman et al. and Pepperberg are notable examples both of what
nonhuman species can achieve with intensive training—and also how vast a functional
discrepancy there is between even the most highly enculturated nonhuman animal and the
average human subject. Wasserman’s plea to withhold judgment on the cognitive
abilities of pigeons until a member of that species has been given the same cultural
opportunities as that of a human child strikes us as particularly extreme. Unless pigeons
harbor some heretofore unrealized potential for relational reasoning that surpasses that of
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chimpanzees, bottle-nosed dolphins and African grey parrots, we doubt the discontinuity
between human and nonhuman minds will be challenged by an enculturated pigeon.
R4. Does a discontinuity in relational reasoning actually
explain the functional discontinuity between human and
nonhuman minds?
If it weren’t so widely and stubbornly contested, the claim that there are
significant discontinuities between the functional capabilities of human and nonhuman
minds would seem self-evident and banal. We have great sympathy with those
commentators who believe that the interesting debate is not over whether there are any
human cognitive specializations, but over what these specializations are and what best
explains their origin.
R4.1. Are we just the ‘massively lucky’ species?
Tetzlaff and Carruthers, for example, disagree with our claim that higher-order
relational reasoning lies at the core of the many uniquely human forms of cognition.
Instead, they argue that there are “many distinctively-human learning mechanisms.”
To our eyes, it seems wildly implausible that one species happened to be the only
one lucky enough to have evolved separate and independent “learning mechanisms” for
each distinctively human form of cognition (in a few million years to boot), whereas no
other species evolved any of them. Moreover, as we argued in our target article, any
“massively modular” explanation for human cognitive uniqueness is undermined by the
fact that each distinctively human cognitive ability seems to rely on a common set of
relational competences. Suddendorf acknowledges that we might be on the right track in
looking for deep structural similarities across domains. Tetzlaff and Carruthers,
however, flatly deny that there are any such “commonalities.”
Tetzlaff and Carruthers’ assertion that our human ToM, language faculty and
“intuitive physics” have “nothing to do with relations amongst relations” runs counter to
a large body of existing research and theory (as well as the points of view of many of our
other commentators; see, for example, Bermudez, Gentner and Christie, Halford et
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al., Markman and Stilwell and Suddendorf). Numerous researchers have demonstrated
a compelling empirical relationship between higher-order relational reasoning and ToM
performance (e.g., Andrews et al. 2003; Zelazo et al. 2002) and most theoretical models
of ToM require some degree of higher-order role-based relational reasoning (see, for
example, the theories proposed in Carruthers & Smith 1996). With respect to causal
reasoning, the one point on which most contemporary researchers agree is that the ability
to recognize and reason about the network of relations among causes and effects in a
systematic and allocentric fashion is the bedrock of human causal cognition (e.g., Gopnik
et al. 2004; Lagnado et al. 2005; Tenenbaum et al. 2006). Tetzlaff and Carruthers even
claim that transitive inferences are not about the relations amongst relations, dismissing a
long tradition arguing exactly the contrary (e.g., Halford et al. 1998; Inhelder & Piaget
1964). Ditto for language (e.g., Gomez & Gerken 2000; Hauser et al. 2002; Pinker &
Jackendoff 2005).
Perhaps everybody else is wrong. We would certainly be the last ones to claim
that a ‘consensus’ (no matter how large) is any guarantor of truth. But at the very least, it
seems incumbent on Tetzlaff and Carruthers to provide a far more substantive and
convincing refutation of our argument that ToM, causal reasoning, transitive inference,
and language all involve higher-order relational reasoning of various kinds before
dismissing it out of hand.
To clarify our own position: we never claimed (contrary to what Tetzlaff and
Carruthers write) that “there is just one” mechanism that distinguishes human and
nonhuman learning mechanisms. Reasoning about the relation between relations is not
sufficient to account for any of our human cognitive capabilities. Additional cognitive
and morphological adaptations are also necessary to subserve our distinctively human
capabilities in ToM, language, and abstract causal reasoning. Nor are we arguing against
the functional modularity of human cognition (Barrett & Kurzban 2006). We are merely
arguing that higher-order, role-based relational reasoning is one core component of all of
these distinctively human capabilities, and that the functional super-module that
subserves this form of reasoning in humans is necessary (but not sufficient) to enable
these capabilities.
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R4.2. Is there a discontinuity in executive functioning?
After producing a seminal body of research showing that many distinctively
human forms of thought are preserved despite severe linguistic impairments (e.g., Siegal
et al. 2001; Varley et al. 2005; Varley & Siegal 2000), Siegal and Varley nevertheless
make the surprising suggestion that the differences between human and nonhuman
cognition may be due solely to a difference in “executive functioning” rather than a
“radical restructuring” of human thinking and reasoning.
We are grateful that Siegal and Varley raised the issue of executive functioning.
Variations in executive functioning clearly have a direct impact on the kind and quality of
relational reasoning a subject can perform (Andrews et al. 2003; Halford et al. 1998;
Robin & Holyoak 1995; Waltz et al. 2004). For example, uniquely human forms of
executive control probably subserve the uniquely human forms of planning and practical
decision-making highlighted by Bridgeman. And Hadley (1999) has argued that some
form of a classical computational architecture may be necessary to account for the unique
patterns of information flow manifested by human reasoners. Thus there are undoubtedly
significant differences between the executive functioning capabilities of human and
nonhuman animals that contribute to the significant difference in degree to which human
and nonhuman minds are able to approximate the computational properties of a PSS.
But positing a difference in executive functioning between human and nonhuman
subjects does not somehow undermine our RR hypothesis. Rather, it simply points to one
more facet of our supermodule for higher-order relational reasoning that may be uniquely
human. Unless Siegal and Varley believe that all the distinctively human forms of
cognition they have documented in agrammatic subjects can be performed using the same
representational structures as those employed by nonhuman animals, they should agree
with us that there is something distinctively human about both the architecture of human
relational representations and the executive processes that operate over those
representations.
R4.3. Is the discontinuity due to language alone?
In our target article, we argued that language is not solely and completely
responsible for the differences between human and nonhuman cognition. Many
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commentators took issue with this argument (e.g., Bermudez, Bickerton, Lupyan,
Gentner and Christie). In some cases, the disagreements are due to a difference of
emphasis rather than a difference in substance. Gentner and Christie, for example, agree
with us that our “extraordinary relational ability” is the central reason “why we’re so
smart” (Gentner 2003), yet believe they are disagreeing with us when they accord
“central importance to language and other symbol systems” as well. Not only do we not
disagree with Gentner and Christie on this point, we find their description of the
relationship between language and higher-order relational reasoning in their commentary
to be succinct and eloquent:
On our view, human cognitive powers stem from both inborn relational ability
and possession of a symbol system capable of expressing relational ideas. These
two capacities form a positive feedback cycle. Analogical processes are integral
to language learning... and relational language fosters relational ability.
In our target article, we freely acknowledged the “instrumental role” that
relational language plays in facilitating human learners’ sensitivity to relational
similarities and potential analogies. We simply focused the bulk of our argument on the
other part of the “positive feedback cycle”: i.e., the internal cognitive architecture
necessary to support relational learning and reasoning to begin with. To borrow and
rephrase Gentner and Christie’s closing sentence, our claim is that language, culture and
normal human enculturation are required to fully realize our species’ potential for higherorder, role-based relational thought; but that humans alone are born with this potential.
We also find Bermudez’s “rewiring hypothesis” to be largely consistent with our
own (see also Bermudez 2005). According to this hypothesis, language played a crucial
role in ‘rewiring’ the architecture of the human mind during our evolution as a species.
We believe Bermudez’s rewiring hypothesis is plausible and cogent. The only point we
tried to make in our target article concerning this evolutionary hypothesis was that
language may not have been the only factor that played a role in pushing the architecture
of the human mind in a relational direction. Given the enormous adaptive value that
abstract causal reasoning, ToM, spatial reasoning and analogical inferences have in the
ecological niche occupied by humans, it is at least possible that one or more of these
other relational abilities also played a part. We remain agnostic as to the relative
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importance of these various cognitive abilities. If our RR hypothesis is correct, all of
these specializations co-evolved with out capacity for higher-order, role-based relational
reasoning in such an inextricable and nonlinear fashion that any linear ordering of their
relative importance would be both unverifiable and meaningless.
The evolutionary version of the ‘rewiring’ hypothesis championed by Bermudez
should to be distinguished from the kind of ontogenetic ‘rewiring’ alluded to by Gentner
and Christie and others (e.g., Dennett 1996). We do not doubt that language played and
still plays a crucial role in rewiring the human brain both in its evolution and its ontogeny
(i.e., both Bermudez and Gentner and Christie are right). But any 'rewiring' that was
performed on the human brain over evolutionary time-scales is an entirely different
process (both at a representational and at a physical level) than any 'rewiring' done during
ontogeny. Thus, it is important to emphasize that the rewiring effects of language
learning do not ‘recapitulate’ the rewiring effects of language evolution (newborn human
brains do not start off at the same place as our prelinguistic ancestors or our nonhuman
cousins). We would only have to take issue with Bermudez and Gentner and Christie if
they were to claim that language and cultural learning are the only factors that distinguish
modern human minds from those of extant nonhuman species. To our knowledge, they
would not make this claim (but see Lupyan or Wasserman for scholars who might).
Our disagreement with Bickerton is more substantial. Bickerton acknowledges
the functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds and the importance of
higher-order relational reasoning in this discontinuity. He even gives us four kudos for
confronting the comparative consensus on this contentious issue. But he gives us only a
single kudo for our representational-level account of the discontinuity, preferring his own
story about how language ‘rewired’ the human brain.
We are grateful for any kudos we can get. But we believe we deserve an extra
point for effort. The point of our target article was not to tell an evolutionary story. The
point of our target article was to argue that the modern human brain is quite distinctive in
its representational capabilities and that our unique capacity for higher-order relational
reasoning is not entirely and solely a function of language or enculturation. Here,
Bickerton would seem to be forced to agree with us. He acknowledges in his
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commentary that once language wrought its rewiring effects on the human brain, human
mental representations became qualitatively different from those of other animals and
continue to be so today even in the absence of occurrent verbal labels. But Bickerton does
not provide a formal description of the representational changes wrought by language,
nor does he provide a computational model of how those changes subserve the extralinguistic cognitive abilities that distinguish modern human from extant nonhuman
cognition. We are a long way from providing a complete representational-level account
ourselves; but this is where we think we deserve that extra kudo for effort (see also our
reply to Bermudez in section R5.3 below).
Ironically, the weakest part of Bickerton’s story is his assessment of the cognitive
abilities of nonhuman animals. Bickerton claims that “all non-human representations are
distributed.” And he challenges us to present evidence inconsistent with this proposal.
We think Bickerton would do well to consult the commentaries by Emery and Clayton,
Herman et al., Pepperberg, Suddendorf and Tetzlaff and Carruthers. These
commentaries provide ample evidence that nonhuman representations are, indeed,
functionally compositional and syntactically structured (see also Bermudez 2003; Horgan
& Tienson 1996). Furthermore, Bickerton’s claim that nonhuman representations are
tightly coupled to occurrent stimuli flies in the face of abundant comparative evidence to
the contrary (see, for example, Suddendorf & Whiten 2001).
The problem for Bickerton is that if language is not necessary to subserve
“permanent, focused representations” in nonhuman animals, then Bickerton’s
evolutionary story does little explanatory work. In our view, language had and still has a
substantial role in rewiring the human brain; but language’s distinct evolutionary and
ontogenetic impact on human reasoning falls more along the lines described by
Bermudez and Gentner and Christie, respectively, than that proposed by Bickerton.
R4.4. Are the differences only in our heads?
Barrett concurs with our reassessment of the comparative literature, but takes us
to task for neglecting the role of the environment in supporting higher cognition in
humans (see also Rendall et al.). Her point is well-taken. Many human and nonhuman
cognitive abilities clearly rely on organisms’ ability to make use of their bodies and the
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world in highly evolved, species-typical ways. For example, early work on the
development of analogical problem solving in children called attention to its close
parallels with symbolic play using physical objects (Holyoak et al. 1984 see also Shatz).
And our discussion of the “seriating cups” test of “hierarchical reasoning” relied heavily
on Fragaszy et al.’s (2002) demonstration that this task is more a test of subjects’
sensorimotor skills in the world than their ability to reason about hierarchical
representations in their heads. If we had given due consideration to all the myriad of ways
in which human and nonhuman animals leverage the world and their bodies in order to
solve relational problems, our target article would have been considerably longer.
This said, there is reason behind our gloss. The purpose of our target article was
to suggest an explanation for why human and nonhuman cognition differ so radically.
And here, contrary to Barrett’s contention, the answer cannot be solely or even primarily
“outside the head.” One obvious problem with an “it’s all outside the head” stance is that
it does nothing to explain why humans, and no others, are able to leverage the world in
their species-unique ways. Clark’s (2001) hybrid stance seems more promising: Certain
cognitive tasks are, to borrow Clark’s apt phrase, more “representation hungry” than
others. One class of representation-hungry problems of central importance to all
biological cognizers are relational problems (Clark & Thornton 1997). Figuring out why
human cognizers alone are able to use knowledge-rich artifacts and symbol systems to
help them solve higher-order relational problems requires figuring out, among other
things, what is distinctive about the internal representational processes humans bring to
bear on these problems. As Suddendorf puts it, “chances are that humans’ cognitive
autapomorphies have something to do with our brain autapomorphies.”
R5. Which computational models earn their explanatory
keep?
R5.1. Computational models that aim too low
Lupyan suggests that PDP-style neural-network models could, at least in
principle, provide sufficient representational power to subserve higher-order relational
reasoning (see also Rendall et al.). We agree. We certainly do not rule out PDP-style
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models as possible implementations of higher-order relational reasoning in humans. We
merely believe that anyone who wishes to model human cognition needs to take
Smolensky’s (1999) “Symbolic Approximation” hypothesis very seriously. As we
reviewed in our target article, PDP-style models that fail to acknowledge the necessity of
approximating the higher-order, structural properties of a PSS consistently fall short
precisely where higher-order relational reasoning is required (see also Doumas &
Hummel 2005; Holyoak & Hummel 2000; Wilson et al. 2001b).
R5.2. Computational models that aim too high
Tomlinson and Love pose an excellent question: If animals cannot approximate
a full-fledged PSS, what kind of computational architecture do they have? There is a
conspicuous dearth of biologically plausible, computationally feasible, behaviorally
adequate answers to this question. Indeed, there are so few researchers willing to even
ask this daunting question that we happily accord two kudos to Tomlinson and Love just
for showing up and making the effort.
This said, the BRIDGES model touted by Tomlinson and Love begs the question
at issue in our target article. The BRIDGES model solves S/D and RMTS tasks by
combining exemplar-based category learning (what we call perceptual relational
learning) with structured relational mapping (which we claim is unique to humans). No
one doubts, of course, that S/D and RMTS tasks can be solved by structured relational
mapping—human subjects may very well solve RMTS tasks in this manner under certain
conditions. But the issue at stake in our target article is whether or not there is any
evidence that other extant species employ this particular mechanism as well.
Tomlinson and Love point out that an explanation based on sensitivity to
categorical entropy alone does not explain the degree to which pigeons are influenced by
the featural similarity between the test array and previous arrays the animal has been
trained with. We agree. Categorical entropy is certainly inadequate to account for all of
the patterns of relational responding manifested by pigeons or any other animal (as Cook
& Wasserman 2006 themselves point out). But all of the additional influences on
pigeons’ relational responses, including those documented by Gibson and Wasserman
(2004), are further examples of feature-based relations, not the higher-order structural
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relations we have argued are unique to humans. And Tomlinson and Love give no reason
to believe that pigeons or any other nonhuman animal employ higher-order mappings
between structured relations in order to solve S/D or RMTS tasks.
R5.3. Does LISA earns its explanatory keep?
We discussed the LISA model of analogical reasoning proposed by Hummel and
Holyoak (1997; 2003) as one possible model for how higher-order relational reasoning
might be implemented in a neurally plausible architecture. But Tetzlaff and Carruthers
are not unjustified to point out LISA’s numerous limitations. To put it bluntly, LISA is a
rudimentary, highly stylized model of analogical reasoning that only accounts for a small
part of what makes human cognition human (though it is getting better, see Doumas et al.
in press). In our view, LISA is the worst model of higher-order reasoning currently on
offer, except for all the others. If Tetzlaff and Carruthers have a better model to suggest,
we are all ears.
Bermudez largely concurs with our analysis of the discontinuity between human
and nonhuman minds but argues that the LISA model simply “recapitulates” our
functional-level description and does not “explain” how this discontinuity evolved in the
first place. It is true that we did not provide an ‘explanation’ for how higher-order
relational reasoning evolved in the human brain; but simply invoking a story about how
language ‘rewired’ the human mind (see also Bickerton) leaves most of the interesting
representational-level questions unanswered as well. It is one thing to identify the
functional characteristics of the discontinuity between human and nonhuman cognition. It
is quite another to explain how the functional abilities specific to human cognition are
implemented in the neural matter of the human brain.
Representational-level computational models such as LISA (see also Tomlinson
and Love) have an invaluable but undervalued role to play in cognitive science. It is all
too common for psychologists and philosophers to create high-level models of a given
cognitive behavior without giving due consideration to whether such models are
computationally feasible or biologically plausible. Although there are clearly multiple
distinct ‘levels’ of explanation in cognitive science, even Marr (1982) did not
countenance ignoring all but the highest-level of analysis. Working implementations of a
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cognitive capability have the potential to challenge or support the plausibility and
coherence of higher-level specifications, to provide new insights into the operational
characteristics of that cognitive capability, and to serve as models bridging the (often
quite large) gap between functional-level and neural-level descriptions.
The bulk of our target article focused on identifying the functional characteristics
of the discontinuity between human and nonhuman cognition. Developers of symbolicconnectionist computational models such as LISA are trying to understand what kind of
rewiring changes are necessary in order to subserve the higher-order relational
capabilities that both we and Bermudez believe are unique to the human mind—
including those that are necessary for language itself. LISA, in particular, provides one
possible example of how the higher-order relational capabilities of the human mind might
be implemented on top of the lower-order, perceptually-grounded capabilities of the
nonhuman mind. At the very least, then, LISA provides some confirmation that our RR
hypothesis is neither computationally infeasible nor neurally implausible.
But LISA’s explanatory neck is stuck out a good deal farther. If LISA is correct,
the substantive discontinuity between human and nonhuman cognition came about
because only the hominid lineage evolved the ability to use synchronized activity among
prefrontal neural populations to support dynamic-binding between roles, fillers and
structured relations. Although neural synchrony is used by many species for coding
contextual associations of various sorts (see Fries, Nikolic & Singer 2007), LISA
suggests that co-opting this mechanism for role-based relational coding was responsible
for the “Great Move” (Newell 1990) in human cognition. Certainly, neural synchrony is
not the only possible mechanism by which the human brain might approximate the
higher-order properties of a PSS (see Smolensky 1999; Wilson et al. 2001a for other
possibilities). And the hypothesis that some form of neural synchrony is the critical
innovation subserving higher-order human cognition requires much further empirical
support before it can be deemed anything more than a plausible possibility (but see
Uhlhaas & Singer 2006 for a start). Nevertheless, Bermudez is surely mistaken to argue
that LISA is merely a “redescription” of the functional-level facts.
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Bermudez challenges us to explain why the ability to represent higher-order
relations, abstract roles, and functions is such a rarity among animals. Here again, LISA
suggests one possible story that would not have been apparent otherwise: One of the most
interesting and provocative findings to arise out of symbolic-connectionist research is
that it is, in fact, quite hard to approximate the higher-order features of a PSS in a
neurally plausible fashion. Although higher-order relational reasoning may come
naturally to modern humans, it does not come naturally to neural networks. By contrast, it
is much easier for neural networks to approximate the kinds of perceptual reasoning that
characterize nonhuman cognition. Indeed, traditional PDP-style networks are clearly
quite good at approximating many of the basic capabilities of animal cognition. And
tweaking these models with various task-specific tricks, ploys and heuristics (Clark &
Thornton 1997) allows these networks to approximate fairly complex relational tasks as
well. But there is no simple ‘next step’ that will transform a clever PDP model into a fullfledged PSS complete with dynamic role-filler binding and higher-order relational
structures. To cross the gap between a PDP network and a PSS, LISA suggests that a
neural system needs to make a much more fundamental and costly change in its
architecture. From an evolutionary point of view, then, LISA suggests that nonhuman
cognitive species have evolved into various “local minima” in the space of biological
neural systems, and that the cost of moving out of these local minima has been
prohibitive for all but one species on this planet.
R6. so who was mistaken?
The editors of this journal warned us that the title, “Darwin’s Mistake”, might
distract some commentators from the substantive issues at stake in our article. They were
right. Burghardt compares our hypothesis to the metaphysical arguments proposed by
Mortimer Adler and Will Gaylin and warns that we have opened a “wedge” that
creationists will exploit. Gardner aligns us with Alfred Russell Wallace and claims that
“virtually all” of the experimental evidence we cited commits the same methodological
error as Pfungst’s work with Hans the horse. Wasserman challenges our hypothesis not
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by rebutting any of our empirical claims but by comparing our “bleak assessment of
animal cognition” to that of John Locke and C. Lloyd Morgan.
Unfortunately, the reaction of these commentators is not atypical. Many
contemporary comparative psychologists reflexively treat any suggestion of a cognitive
discontinuity between human and nonhuman species as a heresy equivalent to defending
creationism or, worse, anthropocentrism. For the record, we never suggested either that
some deus ex machina played a role in the evolution of the human mind or that animals
lack the power of abstraction; and we never called for Darwin to surrender his place in
the pantheon of great scientists. Indeed, our hypothesis is entirely Darwinian in its
inspiration. Was not the entire point of Darwin’s (1859) magnum opus that the
“Divergence of Character”, combined with the principles of “Natural Selection” and the
“Extinction of less-improved forms” would, by their very nature, create functional
differences between extant organisms, some so great as to differentiate one kind (i.e.,
species) of organism from another? Lupyan puts it perfectly: “owing to nonlinear
interactions between genotypes, environment, and the resulting phenotypes, functional
discontinuities are a common product of continuous evolutionary tinkering.” Our claim
that continuous evolutionary processes have produced a radical functional discontinuity
between the cognitive abilities of extant species is not an affront to Darwin’s legacy (cf.
Burghardt, Wasserman)—it is what Darwin’s own theory predicts.
Burghardt uses the bulk of his commentary to debate the semantics of the term
“difference in kind.” According to Burghardt’s analysis, which he attributes to Adler
(1968), any gap compatible with evolution is ipso facto no more than a “superficial”
difference in kind, illustrated by the state change from water to ice that results when a
continuous variable—i.e., temperature—reaches a certain threshold. Burghardt illustrates
Adler’s stronger “radical difference in kind” by the distinction between living and nonliving entities, which Adler himself apparently viewed as a gap too great to be crossed by
material processes.
It is hard to see how any interesting biological differences are cogently captured
by Burghardt’s taxonomy. Is the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic
organisms a “superficial” or a “radical” difference in kind? Even Darwin’s concept of a
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‘species’ seems to run afoul of this simplistic taxonomy. Burghardt’s semantic analysis is
even less enlightening with respect to the evolution of human cognition. The differences
between human and nonhuman brains are clearly not limited to an incremental change
along some single continuous quantity, such as number of neurons or brain size (Preuss
2000). Yet everybody (reasonable) agrees that there is no need to posit any special kind
of nonmaterial mental stuff. Whatever differences there are between human and
nonhuman minds, they are certainly more than “superficial” in Adler’s sense but
definitely less than “radical”, and in any case are completely compatible with and
predicted by Darwin’s materialist theory of evolution.
So did Darwin make a mistake? His liberal use of second-hand anecdotes and
anthropomorphic attributions in the opening chapters of the Descent (1871) did not mark
his finest scientific moment. His infatuation with the mental and moral virtues of
domesticated dogs illustrates the problem. Dogs, Darwin argued, exhibit “a sense of
humour, as distinct from mere play” and “possess something very like a conscience.”
“There can be no doubt,” he goes on to write, “that a dog feels shame, as distinct from
fear, and something very like modesty when begging too often for food” (p. 40).
Admittedly, Darwin’s emphasis on the mental continuity between human and
nonhuman minds was politic in his time—as it still is today. And whatever mistakes
Darwin made, he made them almost a hundred years before the rise of modern linguistics,
computational theory, genomics and the cognitive ‘revolution’ in psychology. So after
considering the commentaries on our target article, we admit our original title may have
been too harsh.
As Wynne reminds us, the stance taken by many comparative psychologists today
is even more anthropomorphic than Darwin’s. Burghardt’s commentary confirms
Wynne’s suspicions: “Research over the last 40 years,” Burghardt writes, “has shown that
Darwin actually underestimated the mentality of apes, as in tool making, numerosity, and
communication.” Indeed, in many respects, the hypothesis we proposed in our target
article lies closer to Darwin’s views on the matter than to those of many of our
contemporaries. Darwin (1871) at least acknowledged the “immense” and “enormous”
difference between “the lowest savages” and even the “most highly organised ape”—
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whereas many comparative researchers today believe that a human child magically kept
alive by itself on a desert island would “not differ very much” from other great apes
(Tomasello & Rakoczy 2003; see also Gardner, Lupyan, Wasserman). And unlike
some researchers (e.g., Bickerton) who believe that language alone can explain what is
distinctive about the human mind, Darwin argued—as we do—that “the mental powers of
some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing
ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use” (Darwin
1871 p. 57).
In short, any differences we may have with Darwin concerning the cognitive
limitations of nonhuman animals pale in comparison to the differences we have with
most of our contemporaries in comparative psychology. And any mistakes Darwin may
have made over the course of his career seem trivial when weighed against the
monumental insights he provided into the evolution of life in general and the origins of
the human mind in particular. In hindsight, we erred: “Darwin’s Triumph” makes a better
title.
R7. Appendix: falsifying the relational re-representation
hypothesis
Hereinbelow, we sketch examples of experimental protocols capable of falsifying
our functional-level claims for each of the distinctively human relational capabilities
discussed in our target article.
R7.1. analogical relations
Experiment 1: formal analogies
Raven Standard Progressive Matrices Test (Raven 1941) provides a well-studied
template for developing nonverbal measures of formal analogical reasoning. This
protocol can be easily adapted to nonhuman subjects. According to our RR hypothesis,
many nonhuman animals are capable of solving Raven-like problems involving zero
relations (even non-enculturated pigeons!) and some may be capable of solving one-
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relation problems; but no nonhuman animal is capable of solving Raven-like problems
involving two or more relations (see discussion by Waltz et al. 1999).
Experiment 2: visuospatial analogies
The dolphin’s prowess at mimicry (see Herman 2006 for a review) provides an
opportunity to test this species’ ability to reason about simple visuospatial relations in an
analogical fashion. Our proposed test of visuospatial analogies employs the “progressive
alignment” strategy that Kotovosky and Gentner (1996) used to “train” children to
recognize relational mappings: i.e., subjects begin by recognizing highly similar
examples of a relation and are progressively encouraged to compare more and more
disparate instances. Then, on each test trial, role-based and perceptual similarity are
pitted against one another.
Train a dolphin to mimic the relational action demonstrated by a trainer as closely
as possible given the set of objects available to the dolphin in the pool. In the beginning,
the objects in the pool should allow the dolphin to mimic the trainer's actions quite
closely: e.g., the trainer touches a stick to a Frisbee, and the dolphin has available a
different but identical stick and a different but identical Frisbee. Then, the dolphin can be
trained on more and more challenging problems by using objects that can no longer
serve, literally, to imitate the trainer's actions. For example, when the trainer touches a
stick to a Frisbee, there is only a stick and a ball in the pool; when the trainer puts a ball
in a box, there is only a Frisbee and a basket in the pool.
Once the dolphin has learned to mimic the relevant relations using perceptually
disparate objects, the dolphin can be tested on tasks that in which perceptually similar
objects play conflicting roles. For example, the trainer could put a ball in a basket, and
the dolphin could be given a small basket, a larger box and an even larger ball (where the
ball is too large to go in the box and the box is too large to go in the basket, so that the
‘analogous’ solution is for the dolphin to put the basket in the box). Or the trainer might
blow a ping-pong ball through a cylinder with her mouth and the dolphin could be given
an identical cylinder, a hoop and a ball that is too large to pass through either the hoop or
the cylinder, so that the analogous solution is for the dolphin to push or blow the cylinder
through the hoop with her mouth.
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Of course, success on any one test trial is of little significance. Any given trial
could be passed using some feature-based heuristic or, indeed, simply by chance. In order
to provide convincing evidence of analogical reasoning, subjects must demonstrate their
ability to systematically mimic the trainer’s actions across a variety of visuospatial
relations.
Experiment 3: analogical problem-solving
Tests involving “artificial fruits”—i.e., containers that can only be opened using a
specific sequence of movements—have been a staple of comparative research ever since
they were introduced by Whiten et al. (1996). In the past, these experiments have focused
on testing an animal's ability to “imitate” the actions taken by a demonstrator. The
following experiment uses the “artificial fruit” apparatus to test for a much more
cognitively demanding ability: the ability to gain insight into how to solve a novel
problem by observing a demonstrator solve a different but analogous problem.
In our proposed experiment, there are pairs of artificial fruits. Both fruits in a pair
are identical except that the combination of movements necessary to open each fruit’s
“lock” is perceptually different but structurally analogous. For example, if one fruit’s
lock can be opened by pushing three buttons in the sequence 2-1-3, then the analogous
fruit’s lock can be opened by pulling three bolts out in the same 2-1-3 sequence.
Alternatively, if one fruit’s lock can be opened by setting three switches into the positions
Up – Down – Down, then the analogous fruit’s lock can be opened by turning three
knobs to the positions Left – Right – Right. To test subjects’ ability to solve novel
problems by analogy to observed solutions, the demonstrator opens one fruit of a pair
repeatedly in front of the test subjects, and then the subjects are given the opportunity to
open the analogous fruit by themselves.
R7.2. higher-order spatial relations
Experiment 4: scale-model comprehension
Kuhlmeier et al.’s (2002) original experiments on scale-model comprehension
among chimpanzees could be easily modified to provide a valid test of a nonverbal
subject’s ability to reason about higher-order spatial relations. First, any local perceptual
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similarity between miniature objects and full-sized objects must be eliminated (e.g., all
landmarks should be perceptually identical). Second, the location of the scaled and fullsized versions of objects must be systematically varied on each trial.
Experiment 5: single-dimensional map comprehension
Huttenlocher et al. (1999) provide an elegant test of a simple form of spatial
reasoning that is a necessary precursor for reasoning about higher-order spatial relations:
finding an object based on the scalar correspondence between two surfaces along a single
dimension. To adapt this protocol for nonhuman animals, subjects could be presented
with a long, narrow tray that is an order of magnitude smaller than an adjacent sandbox
but has the same aspect ratio as the sandbox. A marker is placed in one of ten possible
locations equidistant along the length of the tray in full view of the subjects and a reward
is hidden at the equivalent location in the larger sandbox out of sight of the subjects.
Subjects are trained to find the reward based on the location of the marker in the first five
distinct locations in the tray (e.g., locations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Once they have mastered this
correspondence, they are tested on whether or not they are able to able to find the reward
in the remaining five, novel locations (e.g., 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
If any nonhuman species succeeds in passing this one-dimensional task, it should
then be tested on whether this ability generalizes to two-dimensional surfaces without
additional training (see Vasilyeva & Huttenlocher 2004). Passing a systematic, twodimensional version of this task on a first-trial basis would provide definitive evidence
for higher-order relational reasoning in the spatial domain.
R7.3. transitive inference
The key criteria for demonstrating transitive inference (TI) experimentally are the
following: 1) subjects must be given relational information alone (e.g., A > B) without
any cues as to the absolute values of the arguments (e.g., A = 5, B = 3); 2) the relation
involved must be logically transitive and the fact that the relation is transitive must be
necessary to make the inference; 3) the transitive relation between stimuli must not be
inferable from reinforcement or associative history; 4) the transitive inference must be
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made on a one-shot, first-trial basis (see Halford 1984; Halford et al. 1998 for further
details). Below are two examples of a valid test of TI.
Experiment 6: balance-scale test of transitive inference
Let subjects freely play with a balance-scale that has two fixed platforms for
holding objects equidistant from the fulcrum. (NB: unlike the traditional Piagetian
version of this task, only weight is a variable.) Once the subjects have experienced
placing objects of various weights on each platform and observing that the heavier object
tips the balance down, train them to indicate which platform will tip down (e.g., by
pointing or moving a marker) using a set of balls of various sizes, colors and weights.
Once the subjects can reliably predict which platform will be tipped down for any given
pair of balls in the training set, test the subjects on a novel set of identically-sized balls of
different colors, A through E, as follows: Without letting them touch the balls and
without any differential reinforcement, repeatedly show subjects the behavior of adjacent
pairs of balls on the balance-scale, so that they can observe that A > B, B > C, C > D, and
D > E. Then test subjects on non-adjacent, unobserved pairings, e.g., D and B. Subjects
who can systematically predict the behavior of the balance-scale for non-adjacent,
unobserved pairs will have manifested principled evidence for TI.
Experiment 7: transitive inference in great tits
In our reply, we argued that Otter et al.’s (1999) experiment with great tits does
not qualify as evidence for TI. But their protocol could be modified as follows: Allow
female great tits to eavesdrop on simulated agonistic encounters between pairs of
unfamiliar males selected from a set of five, with outcomes that imply the dominance
ordering A > B > C > D > E. Then remove the female’s current mate and test whether or
not the subject shows a systematic preference for the dominant male in any given pair
when given a choice of a new mate (e.g., preferring B over D).
R7.4. rules
Experiment 8: structural rule learning using an AGL protocol
The literature on artificial-grammar learning (AGL) with humans provides a rich
mine of experiments that can be used to test nonhuman animals’ ability to infer structural
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rules between non-repeating elements and to generalize this knowledge to novel
vocabularies. Tunney and Altmann (2001), for example, presented subjects with
sequences of eight graphic symbols (A to H) generated from a grammar that allowed any
of the elements E to H to occur in positions 1, 2, 5 and 6 in a uniform, random
distribution, and allowed either the pair A and B, or the pair C and D, to appear (in either
order) in positions 3 and 4. They then evaluated subjects’ assessment of the
grammaticality of 96 unique sequences drawn from an entirely novel vocabulary of eight
nonsense syllables ordered according to the same structural rules. Tunney and Altmann
(2001) showed that human subjects were able to transfer grammaticality discriminations
from graphic symbols to novel nonsense syllables despite an arbitrary mapping between
the two domains, and without any repetitions or other salient perceptual relations between
elements in a given sequence. The same test can be readily adapted to nonverbal animals.
Experiment 9: structural rule learning using a contingency learning task
The following experiment is adapted from a contingency learning task first
employed by Shanks and Darby (1998) with human subjects. During the initial training,
subjects are presented with arbitrary cues (e.g., lights, tones) in the following patterns:
AB+, A- and B-; CD-, C+, and D+; and E+, F+ and GH- (where, X+ means that
presentation of the cue X is paired with a reward and X- means that presentation of the
cue X is not paired with any reinforcer). At test, subjects are presented with the novel
patterns, EF, G and H.
In Shanks and Darby’s (1998) original experiment, human subjects who learned
the patterns shown during training anticipated that EF would not be paired with a reward,
whereas cues G and H presented separately would be paired with a reward. In other
words, these subjects learned the “rule” that the likelihood of the outcome after a
compound of two cues is the inverse of the likelihood of the outcome when those same
cues are presented separately. Shanks and Darby (1998) concluded, and we concur, that
success on this protocol demonstrates that the subject can learn structural rules about
contingencies that are distinct from (and even contrary to) the outcomes predicted by
associative conditioning.
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R7.5. hierarchical relations
Experiment 10: hierarchically-structured sentences
Based on the results reported by Herman (1984), bottlenosed dolphins can
comprehend sentential constructions such as “LEFT FRISBEE FETCH RIGHT HOOP,”
which can be glossed as “take the Frisbee to your left to the hoop located to your right.”
To test whether or not dolphins can understand hierarchically-structured, recursive
constructions, one could test their ability to comprehend sentential constructions of the
following form: NP + V + NP, where V is an action such as FETCH, and NP is a noun
phrase that can be either an object (e.g., FRISBEE), a location modifier and an object
(e.g., LEFT FRISBEE), or another noun phrase followed by a location modifier and an
object (e.g., RIGHT FRISBEE LEFT BALL). For example, the construction “RIGHT
FRISBEE LEFT BALL FETCH SPIGOT” instructs the dolphin to take the ball that is to
the left of the Frisbee that is to the right of the subject over to the water spigot. Evidence
that dolphins—or any other nonhuman animal—could comprehend and act on
constructions such as these in a systematic fashion would constitute definitive evidence
that they are able to comprehend hierarchically-structured grammatical relations.
Experiment 11: hierarchical representation of dominance relations
In our target article, we criticized Bergman et al.’s (2003) claim to have found
evidence for hierarchical social classifications among wild savannah baboons. But it
would not be hard to adapt their protocol to provide compelling evidence for hierarchical
representations. Given matrilines A > B > C with offspring a1..an, b1..bn, c1..cn,
respectively, and using the artificial playback protocol described by Bergman et al.
(2003), present subjects not in the A, B or C matrilines with unexpected rank reversals
between the dominant members of the A and B matrilines and the B and C matrilines
(i.e., C > B and B > A but not C > A). Subjects who are capable of reasoning about
social dominance relations in a hierarchical fashion should be more “surprised” at hearing
cx < ay than at hearing cx > ay for any arbitrary member of the two non-adjacent
matrilines. Furthermore (contrary to the results reported by Bergman et al. (2003),
subjects should be more “surprised” by rank reversals between subordinates in more
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distant matrilines (e.g., ax > cy) than rank reversals in more closely ranked matrilines
(e.g., bx > cy).
R7.6. causal relations
Experiment 12: nonhuman primates’ understanding of weight
One of us (DJP) has already proposed numerous experiments capable of testing a
nonhuman primate’s ability to reason about unobservable causal mechanisms (Povinelli
2000). Here we suggest one further experiment that would be probative.
Nonhuman primates are quite familiar with the effort required to lift objects.
Chimpanzees in particular have been shown to use the weight of an object instrumentally.
For example, free-ranging chimpanzees learn to use the weight of heavy stones to crack
open hard nuts and lighter stones to crack open softer nuts, in a population-specific
fashion. The following experiment tests whether nonhuman primates actually reinterpret
the effort required to lift objects and the accompanying sensorimotor cues into a causal
notion of ‘weight’ (see Povinelli in press for more details). First, present subjects with
two balls that are visually identical but of radically differing weights (one is heavy, the
other is very light). Train the subjects to sort the balls into one of two containers based on
the ‘weight’ of the object (e.g., ‘heavy’ ball goes in the container to the left, ‘light ball
goes in the container on right). Separately, allow the subjects to freely play with the
ramp apparatus shown in Figure 1, allowing them to launch balls of various weights
down the ramp without an apple present. Also, allow subjects (a) to dislodge apples with
their hands and (b) observe trainers launch heavy and light balls down the ramp, thereby
seeing that only some balls dislodge the apple. Finally, at test, present the subjects with
the two visually identical but differentially weighted balls and the ramp apparatus, and
observe whether or not the subjects choose the heavier ball on the first trial.
______________________________
Insert Figure 1 about here
______________________________
One of us (DJP) has already run several experiments like the one just described on
a group of captive chimpanzees (see Povinelli in press). Subjects chose to use the heavier
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ball to dislodge the apple at chance levels on the critical test trials—even though they
were still able to sort them correctly.
Experiment 13: using interventions in an epistemic fashion
The following protocol tests an animal’s ability to use the knowledge gleaned
from its own interventions to form a systematic, allocentric representation of a causal
model. Subjects are presented with four levers that allow them to individually trigger four
distinct cues: L1, L2, T1 and T2, where L1 and L2 are cues of one kind (e.g., lights), and
T1 and T2 are cues of another kind (e.g., tones). Pressing the lever corresponding to a
given cue triggers that cue for 10 seconds. A food reward is delivered if either L1 and T1
only or L2 and T2 only are triggered within 10 seconds of each other. Any other
combination of cues (e.g., L1 and L2; L1, T1 and T2) results in a time out and no reward.
Subjects are allowed to freely play with the levers until they discover how to produce the
reward using both the L1 and T1 levers and the L2 and T2 levers.
No rewards are presented in the subsequent test sessions. For the first test session,
the levers corresponding to the L cues are removed and only the levers corresponding to
the T cues remain available. Then, L1 and L2 are presented at random intervals for 10
seconds each. If the subjects understand that they can intervene to produce the cue that
completes a pair of cues that was previously rewarded, they should press the lever
corresponding to T1 while L1 is illuminated, and the lever corresponding to T2 while L2
is illuminated. During a second test session, the levers corresponding to T cues are
removed and the levers corresponding to the L cues are made available, and the
analogous protocol is followed for presentations of T rather than L.
A subject who responds with the appropriate instrumental action in response to all
of these combination of cues will have demonstrated that it can learn and then access the
structure of a simple causal model in a systematic, allocentric fashion across both
observations and interventions.
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R7.7. theory of mind
Experiment 14: experience projection
The following test of ‘experience projection’ is adapted for scrub jays from an
experiment originally proposed by Heyes (1998), adapted by Povinelli and Vonk (2003)
and defended by Penn and Povinelli (2007b). Allow subjects to witness food being
cached by a competitor behind two different barriers. One barrier is made of one-way
glass, allowing the observer to see where the other bird is caching the food, and the other
barrier blocks the observer’s view of the caching bird’s actions. The barriers are of
different colors but otherwise are perceptually identical from the cacher’s point of view
(i.e., both look like mirrors). After the competitor has cached food behind both barriers,
allow the subject to retrieve the caches it saw the other bird make (i.e., behind the oneway barrier). Then, at test, allow the subject to make its own caches either in front of or
behind both kinds of barriers in the presence of a novel competitor. If the subject
preferentially caches behind the opaque barrier rather than the one-way glass barrier, this
would be strong evidence for ‘experience projection.’
Experiment 15: understanding role-reversals
The following experiment tests for evidence of role-based collaboration based on
a protocol first proposed by Povinelli et al. (1992). A pair of subjects is trained to operate
an apparatus that has four pairs of food trays. One of the two subjects (the informant) can
see which of the four pairs of food trays is baited. The other subject (the operator) cannot
see which trays are baited but can pull on one of four handles to bring the corresponding
pair of trays within reach of both participants. The participants are separated by a
Plexiglas partition. The informant is trained to designate which pair of trays is baited by
placing a marker over the appropriate trays. The operator is trained to pull on the handle
that has been marked by the informant. Both subjects can fully observe the actions of the
other during this training procedure. Once both subjects have mastered their respective
roles, the apparatus is rotated in full view of the subjects, thus switching the roles to be
played by both subjects. If both subjects can immediately take the appropriate actions
(i.e., marking the baited trays and pulling on the handle that has been marked), they will
have shown an ability to reason about a collaborative activity in a role-based fashion.
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Experiment 16: role-based collaboration and intentional communication
Based on the capabilities reported by Herman (2006), dolphins may be able to
pass the following test. Train dolphins to respond to the command “Tandem X Y” by
having one dolphin perform behavior X and the other dolphin perform behavior Y in
tandem, where X and Y are selected randomly on each trial from a pool of suitable
behaviors (e.g., back flip, jump). Designate which dolphin is to perform which behavior
by pointing at the appropriate subject. Once the dolphins have mastered this command,
isolate the two dolphins so that only one of them (i.e., the Communicator) can see the
gestures being made by the trainer. Only give the tandem X Y command to the dolphin
designated as the Communicator. Then allow the two subjects to rejoin each other and
perform the designated behaviors. If both subjects are now able to execute the
appropriate X and Y behaviors correctly, this would provide the first definitive evidence
of intentional communication and role-based collaboration in a nonhuman species1.
Experiment 17: an acid test of ‘false belief’ understanding
The ‘acid test’ of a ToM has long been taken to be the ability to reason about the
cognitive effects of another subject’s counterfactual representations about the world (for
recent discussions of what should and should not count as evidence for 'false belief'
understanding, see Penn & Povinelli 2007b; Perner & Leekam 2008). Pack and Herman
(2006) suggest that dolphins may be capable of understanding ‘false beliefs’ (see also
Tschudin 2006). If so, dolphins should be able to pass the following test, adapted from a
task that Call and Tomasello (1999) first employed with children and nonhuman apes (the
nonhumans failed). In the initial training phase, an experimenter hides a reward object in
one of two identical containers in the pool while being observed by one dolphin (the
Observer) but out of sight (and earshot) of the other dolphin (the Retriever). The
Retriever is released back into the common area and the Observer is trained to inform the
1
NB: our proposed Tandem X Y task is qualitatively different from the kind of communication purportedly
performed by bees with their ‘waggle dance’ (De Marco & Menzel 2005). In the case of bees, the
information is a simple broadcast; the assignment of different roles to different recipients is not encoded in
the dance in a systematic fashion.
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Retriever in which container the reward is hidden (e.g., by ‘pointing’ at the container
with her echolocation ‘beam’, or any other species-natural behavior).
Once the two dolphins have mastered their respective roles in the initial training
phase, each trial in the second training phase occurs in the following steps: 1) the
Retriever is removed from the pool area; 2) the reward is hidden in one of the two
containers in view of the Observer; 3) the Observer is removed from the pool area; 4) the
Retriever is released back into the pool area; 5) the Observer is also returned to the pool
area; 6) the Observer is allowed to designate where the reward is; and 7) the Retriever is
allowed to retrieve the reward from one of the two containers. In the initial baseline
training condition, the locations of the two containers remain unchanged over the course
of all steps. In the second baseline training condition, the locations of the two containers
are switched during step 2, in full view of the Observer but not in view of the Retriever.
In the third baseline training condition, the locations of the two containers are switched
after step 5, i.e., in full view of both the Observer and the Retriever. Note that in all three
baseline training conditions, the Observer is correctly informed as to the location of the
reward but the Retriever is not.
Once the Retriever can reliably find the hidden object in all three baseline training
conditions, the crucial test sessions can begin. On successive trials, the following ‘false
belief’ conditions are randomly interspersed with the three baseline training conditions:
1) switch the location of the two containers after step 4 in view of the Retriever but not
the Observer; 2) hide the reward before step 1 in full view of the Retriever and the
Observer; then switch the locations of the containers during step 2 in view of the
Observer but not the Retriever. In the first of these ‘false belief’ conditions, the Observer
is misinformed as to the true location of the reward and the Retriever must infer that the
correct location is the one the Observer does not point out (this is essentially the same
test as reported by Call & Tomasello 1999). In the second ‘false belief’ condition, the
Retriever believes it knows the location of the reward but is misinformed, and the
Observer must inform the Retriever that the containers have been switched and/or that
the Retriever is misinformed.
44 of 51
Additional control conditions are of course necessary. These include interspersing
a condition in which the Retriever sees the placement of the reward but the locations of
the containers are not switched; and normalizing the delays between all steps (see Call &
Tomasello 1999 for additional controls). But if dolphins could pass both of these ‘false
belief’ conditions, this would constitute the first compelling evidence for ToM abilities in
a nonhuman animal.
Figures
Figure 1
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